Reform Gives New Meaning To `Penny Ante'

Get Serious!

May 29, 1990|By TONY GABRIELE Columnist

It was a surprise to learn that Congress is thinking about doing away with pennies. I didn't think Congress ever thought about pennies, or even about single dollar bills, for that matter. I figured you had to have at least seven or eight zeros tacked onto the end of a number to get Congress to pay attention.

Nonetheless, there was the news story last week. Congress is talking about retiring the penny and, for good measure, trying another $1 coin. This is an amusing notion, if you remember the last attempt. You gave somebody one of those Susan Anthony dollars, and they looked at you as if you had handed them a wad of rat pleghm. I still have one of those dollars. I keep in a dresser drawer as an insect repellent.

But this is not the oddest part of the story. This oddest part is that a survey was trotted out claiming that two-thirds of Americans don't want to get rid of the penny.

I can't understand this. If people don't want to get rid of their pennies, why do they give theirs to me?

Over the years, I have amassed a hoard of pennies. I'm sure I'm not the only one either. There are enough pennies lying on people's bedroom dressers across the country to pay off the national debt - if the pennies were worth anything.

Oh, I suppose I could get those paper rolls and wrap up the pennies and take them to the bank. But I'd be afraid that here and there I'd be off by a penny and the bank would have me arrested as a brazen penny swindler, and I would lose my job and have to beg on the streets. And have people put pennies in my cup.

If the government wants to solve our coin quandary, there is a simple solution. It's been suggested before, but now is the time to bring it up again.

They should take the last zero off of every dollar figure - everything that had cost $10 would cost $1, everything that had cost $1,000 would cost $100, and so forth.

Correspondingly, everybody's income also would lose a zero. If you were getting paid $500 a week, your weekly pay would become $50. That way, the relative value of everything would stay the same.

It wouldn't be difficult at all. All financial records are kept in computers nowadays, right? All it would take is a single keystroke.

A dollar would be worth something again. It would instantly reverse several decades' worth of inflation. If you don't think that's an advantage, consider: You will no longer have to put up with the droning of your older relatives about how they fed a family of eight on a weekly paycheck of $45, which is what you just paid for a pair of sneakers, and how nobody knows the value of a dollar anymore.

My motive in fostering this plan should be clear by now: If the dollar has real value once again, so will the penny. This will be to the advantage of folks like me, with all those coins left in pants pockets and fallen behind the sofa cushions, and the losers will be the rich high-rollers who never handle any actual cash. You think Donald Trump has a pile of pennies on his bedroom dresser? It will strike a great blow for social equality.

We might feel a little nervous at first, having only 65 cents left in our pockets at the end of the week, but it will be worth it. In addition to the return of the two-cent newspaper, the dime ice cream cone, the $11 weekly grocery bill and the $1,200 new automobile, even government expenditures will be measured in figures approaching reality. Why, just think, even the savings-and-loan bailout cost will be down to a couple dozen billion dollars!